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Every year more than 7,600 women are released from Maine prisons and jails.
Having a criminal record can make it more challenging to find a job and stable housing. Some women struggle to regain custody of their children. Others lack emotional support as they confront feelings of inadequacy and isolation.
But a Maine-based nonprofit called Reentry Sisters is trying to change that by building a community of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women one sister at a time.
Three days before Jessica Sinclair’s release from prison, a flood severely damaged the employee housing that she’d secured. Without that place to stay, she says her new job was gone because she didn’t have a driver’s license or a way to get to work. From there, she says things quickly went downhill.
“The person that picked me up from prison was my mother,” Sinclair said. “She literally had drugs in the car and somebody was doing drugs like right behind my head … So, within an hour and a half I’m using meth, within three hours I was smoking heroin and within three and a half hours I had to use the Narcan that the prison gave me when I was released to save somebody’s life at the house I bought heroin from.”
For about eight months, Sinclair tried to fool her probation officer into thinking that she was compliant and had her life on track. But, eventually, she couldn’t do it anymore, and was sent back to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham for two and a half years.
“I just did not have the support,” she said. “I did not have the financial support. I had no stability … and like, if you hang out with people you used to use drugs with, you’re probably going to use drugs with those people, and so on.”
Maine Department of Corrections data show that about half of the women in prison are serving time for drug convictions. Some grew up in families with mental illness and substance use disorder. And, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, 90% of incarcerated women are survivors of trauma, including physical and sexual abuse. Like Sinclair, many are also mothers. They deal with complicated feelings of abandonment and loss in prison and stigma after they get out.
“I’m formerly incarcerated and that’s what led me to begin Reentry Sisters was the absolute lack of services anywhere along the carceral system that really focused on the needs of women and girls,” said Linda Small, who is also the group’s executive director.
She watched women repeatedly cycle through the prison’s revolving door. She’d become an advocate on the inside and realized she’d have to continue once she got out. So she and a friend started a Facebook page for women who’ve interacted with the justice system.
“Next thing I know, there were 60 women on there,” Small said. “Just word of mouth. And now there’s well over 220-some-odd women statewide, which showed me that there was a need and desire to maintain connection.”
At first, Small said, it was a place to post job and educational opportunities and a way for women to help each other without being judged. But in 2023 Reentry Sisters emerged as a nonprofit that focuses on policy and legislation and direct services for women in prison, where they hold in-person meetings every month.
“So we’re getting to know these women, know what their concerns are and bridge those gaps before they’re actually leaving,” she said.
Reentry Sisters also emphasizes higher education.
“I will say that I have gotten the grades back on two of my classes and I got an A on each one,” Jessica Sinclair said during a recent weekly meeting over Zoom. “I’m just waiting to hear back on my communications class.”
Sinclair is now a second-year student at the University of Maine at Augusta. And for the past year, she and nine others have also been taking classes at Colby College in Waterville as part of a special education initiative. Cohort member Victoria Scott started taking classes while serving eight years in prison. She graduated from UMA last year and now works part time for the Educational Institute at MIT.
“I was a poor kid from the sticks of Maine. I don’t have pathways to opportunity like this,” she said. “And that’s something that Reentry Sisters really shines at is creating relationships … for people post incarceration.”
Scott said these pathways and relationships help build resilience. Not everyone leaving prison can withstand the pressure. Over a 10-year period from 2013 to 2023, the Maine Department of Corrections found that 700 people died while serving probation in Maine. Scott herself said she lost three good women friends she met in prison.
“It really hurts when you lose people to addiction or other struggles because they didn’t have the support. They didn’t have the opportunity. They didn’t have the motivation, or they just couldn’t find something in themselves to overcome that,” Scott said.
Jessica Sinclair said Reentry Sisters has helped her find like-minded, sober friends who lift each other up and hold each other accountable, something that was missing from her life the first time she left prison.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.